


the fire grows near

by LocketShoru



Series: Aeternum -Iridescence- [2]
Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Anthropomorphic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Survival, as in the chapter cuts off with the implication, offscreen sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22277884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: [Aeternum II] When there are ravagers who want everything they see dead and your younger brother is injured, you find the shadows and you hide. Doesn't mean you always have to stay there.
Relationships: Bennu Kagaho/Libra Dohko
Series: Aeternum -Iridescence- [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1596289
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9





	the fire grows near

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to my fiance for the hype, my poor family for having to deal with being voluntold to soundboard for me, Anony from the Underworld's Hottest Mess groupchat for her eternal support, and Yami from the Aries Hell Group for pointing me towards these two for the second part of Aeternum over more MiAlba.  
> Shoutout to my entire city for slowing down my updates by snowing everyone in and cancelling class, where I do the majority of my writing. If quality's not as good, blame the weather and my inability to write at a reasonable time.

The gunning of engines was all too familiar, all-terrain vehicles like a death sentence around him. He curled up tighter, the only treasure he had left in his arms breathing in short, rapid bursts of terror. His throat let out a near-silent coo of fear. He willed everything he had to stay quiet, stay in the dark, stay where they might not be discovered.

The screw-tips below him drove into his flesh through the loose mesh jacket, the pain only adding to his panic. Breathe in, breathe out, quicker than a bird he’d been forced to imitate, keep the tail curled in close, don’t let the feathers underneath glow, don’t stray from the darkness where it was _safe_. 

He tried to breathe in, just a little, through the cloth mask he wore over his nose and mouth. It wasn’t helping. The only thing he could taste was dust and his own fear. Sui whimpered a little and shifted closer into his chest. They were almost on top of them now, the gun of the engines rattling the sheets of metal above them. It wasn’t quite pitch-black, they were too near the surface, but it was dark enough.

They could almost hear the voices, if the ravagers were speaking. They could almost hear battle, someone yelling, a snarl what seemed six feet above their pocket of safety. If anything could be safe, where they were.

He’d heard them coming and dove into the metal. After a decade, it had settled a little, the layers on layers of metal and debris settling into something vaguely stable. There were still ways in and out, and there was no way they were getting any deeper into the debris without anyone noticing. They weren’t exactly quiet.

Sui, for his credit, remained silent, if his breathing was rapid and fearful. The ravagers above seemed to stay there, snarling. 

“Well, get on with it! They don’t need to stay standing and they’ve at least got clothes!” called a sharp, masculine voice above them. He curled in closer to his brother, fighting to keep his eyes open as fear crawled up his spine, threatening to spew out from his throat.

They waited out the battle. They didn’t have another choice. He tried to block out the screams, tried to cup Sui’s ears with his hands - claws, really, at this point - to keep the worst of it from him. The sound of gunfire rocketed through the air, and someone snarling threats. The dirtbikes revved their engines, upon them were surely ravagers.

It was at most, fifteen minutes before the ravagers seemed to leave, their engines fading. His breathing didn’t slow. The metal about fifteen feet away crunched and fell away, the scream echoing as the man who made it fell down the impossible, sharp-edged cavern. A wave of nausea slammed into his stomach, heavy and unforgiving and certainly not leaving. And then he heard laughter.

“Ha! They really thought they could actually beat us this time, isn’t that _great_?” The voice was deep, masculine, and vaguely young.

“No, I don’t think they counted on either of us having military-grade weapons left,” commented a deeper, slower voice in a jovial tone.

Great. They were stuck in the aftermath of a conflict between two opposing ravager factions. Wasn’t that just _swell_. He held still, trying to force down the nausea.

“We should check for anything they might have left behind,” suggested a third voice, young and surprisingly feminine. “I saw at least one fall through the metal just now. We should check that.”

Footsteps echoed above him, heavy and crunching like someone who had proper boots. “Doesn’t look like he left anything but his bike, honestly,” remarked the first voice. “Let’s see… _Oho_ , lookit this, Razz, it’s got _gasoline_!”

Silently, he agreed with the voice. Gasoline was gold itself in days like these… there was supposed to be a refinery up in the mountains to the north, but nobody could get that far. He wasn’t risking the journey himself, either.

Someone stepped relatively lightly just over them, heading towards where the man had fallen through. He held still, waiting for them to just go, waiting for it to end. The metal on top of them shifted with the movement.

“I’ve got it,” said a new voice, stepping across to where the dirtbike must have been and attempting to tug it free. Their metal covering shifted more, and he curled up about as tight as he could without asphyxiating Sui. _Please let it stay put_ , he thought, hoping that it would, terrified that it wouldn’t.

The metal titled to one side, like someone was picking it up. “Bike’s caught, let’s just pull this piece out,” said one of the voices, and everything was light.

He didn’t even bother letting his eyes adjust. He just stood where he was, Sui in his arms, tail and crest of feathers flared in a vain hope of making himself look bigger. The tip of his tail felt warm, like it was burning again, and he snarled. Sui shrank into him, clinging to his jacket.

In front of him was four people and the bloody remains of a battlefield. The two by the dirtbike couldn’t have been any older than Sui: some sort of bull-child and a blue mountain goat, clearly siblings. A few feet away was what looked to be some sort of bearded dragon, short and dark-skinned and quite surprised.

“Come any closer and you’re going to be _charcoal_ ,” he hissed, feeling flames lap at his lips. If nothing else, being able to breathe fire without injuring himself might have been the only good thing about being a wingless phoenix.

The dragon raised his hands in surrender. “Are you a ravager?” he asked, voice hesitant. “Listen, you’ve got a kid and I don’t like killing kids, but if you’re a ravager ambush I really, really don’t want to have to let the kid go through something worse.”

“Peace, Dohko,” said someone behind him, the slow voice from before. He whirled around, trying to keep them all in sight. He was a tall, heavy-set bull of a man. “I think he’s just frightened. He isn’t wearing ravager gear or an emblem. I’m Rasgado, by the way. Who might you be, young man?”

He bared his teeth, stepping back. There was no way he could outrun them, and true to what he’d heard, the dragon - Dohko - had some sort of missile launcher strapped to his leg. He’d never be able to run from them.

Dohko sighed, tossing the missile launcher on top of the piece of sheet metal he was standing on, balanced almost precariously on top of concrete. “We’re not going to hurt you if you don’t attack us,” he said, gently. “I’m Dohko. That’s Teneo and Celintha, they’re Razz’s kids. We’re not ravagers.”

“What are you, then?” he hissed. As far as he knew, people were either ravagers or didn’t want him and Sui around. Sui himself was doing a very good job of not moving. It helped, he supposed, that he was running a fever from an infected wound.

“Mercenaries, under the flag of Aspros,” Teneo said, waving from his place beside his sister. He had the horns of a bull and the legs of a satyr, not that he was too sure about those hooves. “We’re running supplies out from Sanctuary to the Lethe Hospital and fending off ravagers and stealing all their food. It’s good, honest work, and if you aren’t going to attack us, you can come with us. We’ve got a while to go before we get to the Styx Tavern and that’s our next stop, so.”

He wasn’t going to lie, food sounded good. And he _had_ heard the name Aspros before, some man who had gathered up a bunch of people who could move quickly and directed them around the area helping others. 

“How do I know I can trust you?” he asked, fire still licking at his lips, his grip on Sui tightening. He flicked the tips of his tail feathers, ignoring the sound of crackling fire.

“I guess you’ll have to trust us to find out,” Dohko said, which was fairly reasonable. “We can take you to the Styx Tavern and get you washed up. You look like you need it pretty badly, and your kid doesn’t look too great either.” 

Sui tugged at his jacket weakly. He looked down, feeling his eyes go wide at just how sickly he looked. “Let’s go with them,” he said quietly, eyes bright with the fever. “They fought off ravagers, that’s good of them.”

He nodded, ever so slightly, allowing his feathers to lay down against his neck and tucking Sui’s forehead into his neck. “Do you have any medicine?” he asked.

Dohko and Rasgado exchanged a look. “We can spare a little, if your kid’s sick and we have the right kind. We can get him proper care in Lethe, but that’s another four days out. We should be able to make Styx tonight, and Hypnos and Thanatos can work a miracle or two for him.”

“He’s my baby brother,” he corrected, quietly. “It’s fever. We were attacked a few days ago, and as we were running, he gored his leg on a wrought iron pole. It’s infected, and there’s no water to clean it with.”

Dohko stepped forward, his steps light on the debris they were standing on, careful to test his weight before stepping anywhere. He stuffed a hand into a side pocket of his backpack, pulling out a mildly-dirty rag and a water bottle, which looked painfully full. “We’ve got water,” he said, gently. “Let’s find somewhere stable enough to sit down and we’ll clean it out.”

“We need to keep moving,” Teneo said, having managed to help Celintha free the bike while they were talking. “Can’t it wait until we get to Styx?”

“A few minutes won’t hurt, and we drove the ravagers off,” Dohko argued. “The poor kid doesn’t need to be hurt any more than he already is. I’ll clean it and wrap it and then we’ll keep going. It won’t take long.”

Teneo sighed, rolling his eyes, and started pushing the bike towards what looked like some sort of wagon with tank treads strapped to it, throwing it up into the wagon without much of a second thought. “The bike’s gasoline, by the way. Should be able to separate it out into something useful.”

“Gasoline is useful,” he pointed out. Dohko started walking, gesturing him forward, and he started to walk with him, watching the terrain for any chances of falling through. Up here, one wrong step meant death. A lot of things did, really. “Burn it for some nasty flames. Keeps the older vehicles running, too.”

“That was like, fifty years ago. Everything else we find runs on fusion power like sensical things,” Celintha remarked. 

“A lot of folks had used cars, too. Gasoline lasted as long as it did because of that. It’s not charcoal and water, sure, but it’s useful.”

Celintha rolled her eyes, and they walked. After about a half-hour’s walk, they found a chunk of concrete wide enough to offer some stability. Dohko climbed up, his tail easily balancing him out, and he held out his arms.

“Can I have him? Should get a look at that wound before anything else,” he said. He stepped up to him, carefully, and held Sui out. He’d fallen asleep sometime during the walk, his face pale and sweaty from the fever.

He perched beside him, watching, never quite allowing himself to sit down as Dohko worked, unwrapping the rags he’d found and exposing the wound. It was deep red bordering on green, and Dohko sighed, pulling out water and what looked like hydrogen peroxide.

“Give me a few minutes,” he said, and started work. Rasgado dropped onto his other side, holding out what looked to be cheesecloth and rough, salt-preserved meat.

“What’s your name, youngin?” he asked. He took the meat, nodding and slipping it under his cloth mask, tearing into it. It had been over a day since they’d last eaten, and they were lucky that it hadn’t been human meat from a fresh corpse. Things could have been worse. It didn’t mean he was going to take off the mask. He enjoyed breathing a bit more than that.

“Kagaho,” he said, quietly. “My brother’s Sui.”

“Cultivators?”

“Never met any,” he said, and it was the truth. He’d seen evidence of human habitation in the past decade, but met very few, and they rarely wanted him near. Most everyone was migratory now, if they’d lived this long. The radiation meant if you wanted to breathe, you followed the winds. Most people had descended underground, into the layers and layers of debris that coated the ground level. He and Sui had stayed near the top, keeping near the surface, just enough in shadow to stay hidden. If there were people with their gardens and trying to carve out a new existence, he’d never met them.

Rasgado nodded, letting him chew for a moment. “You’ll meet some in Styx. Good hotspot of activity, and damn well deserves it.”

“What’s there?” he asked, swallowing the bit of meat and tearing into another chunk. Dohko had poured hydrogen peroxide over Sui’s leg and was in the process of using water to clean it out. Teneo and Celintha were fussing with something in the wagon.

“Hypnos and Thanatos run it, they’re twin unicorns. Some sort of healing powers, like your fire. They’ve got a pair of kids and the only freshwater spring in the valley. They guard it with their lives, but if you need help, they’re there. They’re also pretty happy with the repair job we did on their hydro system a few weeks ago, so I think they’ll be able to help you.” Rasgado nodded at him, brushing silver, bull-coarse hair out of his face, adjusting his goggles. His eyes were twinkling behind them, reminiscent of old aviator’s goggles he’d seen, back in the days before the accident, when their father sat them around the dinner table and told them about the war.

His parents had died about two days after the accident, cooked alive in the family car with so many others when the freeway fell and trapped them in. He and Sui had been on their own for far longer than he cared to think about.

Dohko looked up. “I’m done,” he said. Sui was now awake, looking mildly confused and with a little less of a fever. “Has everyone eaten?”

Rasgado handed him another piece of meat. Kagaho leaned over, offering what was left of his own to Sui. He didn’t need that much anyway, and the trembling was leaving his hands.

Dohko batted his hand away, pulling out some sort of preserved fruit from his backpack. “You finish that, we’ve got more,” he said. Sui quietly took the fruit, pulling it under his mask with gusto.

Kagaho gave a small smile underneath his mask and a flick of his tail. They settled Sui in the wagon, which Rasgado and Teneo were pulling manually. He walked beside Dohko, who seemed to be leading the whole expedition.

“So… Can I ask what you are?” he said, quietly, eyeing the fact that he had noticed that Dohko looked like a bearded dragon, right up until he had caught sight of his hooves.

Dohko smiled. “Libra dragon,” he said. “Bearded dragon cross with a bull. Some mythological thing usually, but here I am. Don’t ask me how this ended up being me. I can breathe fire and I can run like hell, and that’s all I need. You’re a phoenix, I should think?”

“Bennu phoenix, from what I can tell,” he answered, twitching his tail. “I’m not testing the whole ‘burn into ash and come to life again’ thing. I have no intention on dying when Sui needs me to make sure he lives, too. The seizures are bad enough.”

Dohko nodded, glancing at what appeared to be some sort of screen tied to his right forearm. “We’d best start heading groundward soon,” he muttered to himself. He looked up again. “Seizure of what kind?”

“Epilepsy.”

“I see. That one’s a bitch and a half, especially now.” He glanced up to the rest of the party. “Next stop we head to the tunnels, folks. Radiation’s not looking so good and our gear isn’t going to save us if this keeps up.”

Rasgado waved in response. “Got it!”

“You can check the radiation?” Kagaho asked, raising an eyebrow. They’d been walking for a while, now, following what kind of did look like a used pathway across the rubble, or maybe it was just the one with the least amount of climbing or ravines.

Dohko held out the screen on his forearm for him to see. Sure enough, it was some sort of monitor, reading out both the oxygen levels and radiation in the air, as well as the time, temperature, windchill, and Dohko’s blood sugar levels. The display was a little cracked, but it looked like he took good care of it. “An engineer I knew made these not long after the accident, as many as she could before she died. There’s only about fifty in existence. They all have blueprints on how to make new ones, and as much survival data as she could salvage and program into them. It’s wired directly into my nervous system. It’s saved my life more times than I care to count. She never could get it up to radio so it could connect with others, but for what it has, I’m more than glad to risk my life to make sure it can’t be taken from me.”

He nodded, slowly. “That sounds like something I wish I had. It’s not easy testing radiation by how sick my stomach is.”

Dohko dipped his head. “Then it’s a good thing we found you,” and Kagaho didn’t bother replying to that, only kept walking with him.

They made it to what was certainly civilization as the sky was darkening. There wasn’t any orange to mark a true sunset, only what their mother had called the blue hour, when everything was bathed in indigo after the sun went down. He hadn’t seen the sun in so long.

The Styx Tavern had clearly been built from the remains of an office building, now sunken into the layers of debris and still quite active. He couldn’t see inside of it very well, but the lights seemed to be on and he could hear the loud chatter of people. Dohko guided them towards what looked to be a side entrance, what was originally the start of a bridge now functioning as a landing pad for delivery and actual vehicles.

“Welcome to Styx,” Celintha said cheerfully. “It’ll be _awesome_ to sleep in an actual bed again. way better than a patched-up sleeping bag. C’mon, Saro, let’s go.” She reached into the wagon that Teneo and Rasgado had just set down, coming out with a boy younger than Sui who had apparently slept the past few hours away without Kagaho noticing his existence.

Sui climbed out of the wagon, eyes wide, and headed over to him. Kagaho pulled him close automatically, stroking his hair. “You all right?” he asked, placing the back of his free hand to his forehead. The fever was going down, slow but sure.

“I will be,” Sui murmured, and Kagaho sighed, lifting him up into his arms, tail flicking with worry.

The door to the tavern opened, a young man with butterfly wings and a large gun in hand standing in the doorway. “Identification, if you don’t want me to shoot you, please,” he said quite cheerfully. Kagaho stepped back. Dohko stepped forward.

“Dohko and Rasgado of Mavros’ Mercs pulling in on delivery, pitstop on our way to Lethe,” he said. “We’ve got Teneo, Celintha, Saro, and a couple of wanderers with us. Saro and Sui are injured, and we’ve got seeds from Sanctum. We also have a complete set of _Lord of the Rings_.”

The young man’s face split into a smile. Kagaho noted the lack of mask. “Brilliant, we were wondering if you guys were making a round anytime soon. Dad’ll trade healing for his turn with the books for sure.”

Kagaho stepped closer to Teneo, who was the closest to him. “Who’s this, and can we trust him?” he hissed under his breath.

“Edward, he’s a sylph butterfly, son of Hypnos and one of the owners of the place. He’s just making sure we’re not ravagers,” Teneo answered, reaching over to squeeze his hand through gloves. He pulled away, but nodded all the same.

Edward waved them in. “Come on in, then. Gordon and Queen from Pandora’s mercs made a visit, they’ve got actual, fresh food for everyone tonight, and you’re in luck.”

It turned out that not only did Gordon and Queen - a bull and some sort of plant hybrid who semed content to grow apples from the branches sticking out of his skin for anyone who asked - have food, but they really were sharing it. The chicken they’d brought was a little undercooked, but that meant nothing once he’d spit fire at it and roasted it to the perfect crispiness that he’d enjoyed off a barbecue, so many years of hell behind him. Of course, Rasgado had asked him to repeat the trick for him, and he was almost immediately enlisted into helping Dohko and another fire-breather - a salamander, he was pretty sure - stoke the furnace to make sure everyone could stay warm and with power for the night.

Between the three of them, they got a good chunk of usually nonflammable garbage into burning and providing actual heat. Hypnos, a tall blond man with ears and hooves and a horn square in his forehead, seemed to think healing Sui was a trivial kind of repayment for helping stoke the fire.

He sat beside Dohko at the edge of the furnace, enjoying the heat, sighing with how _good_ it felt. Sui was about ten feet away having his every injury seen to, and they’d both eaten, and he felt better than he had in _months_.

“You need a bath,” Dohko said, smiling up at him. He opened an eye, raising an eyebrow.

“I highly doubt they’re going to let us use their water for something as unnecessary as that,” he answered darkly. “They’ve already gotten us food and healing, that’s a bit much to ask, don’t you think?” He wanted to jump at the offer, but after so many times of being wrong, he wasn’t willing to trust anything that didn’t have the price stated on it immediately.

Hypnos didn’t look up from where he was, but he called out all the same. “You’re mercenaries running supplies and fending off ravagers so the rest of us can get a decent meal and a book every now and then. If you need a bath, go take one. Just don’t go crazy on the water.”

Dohko stood up, stretching out, his tail as straight as his spine. “You heard the unicorn,” he said, mildly teasing. “Come on now, Kagaho, your bath awaits.”

He smiled a little. “Can Sui get one, too?” he asked.

“Mister Hypnos already said he’ll see to it,” Sui said, looking up at him. His eyes were bright, the bruises on his face almost entirely gone, and he sounded better than he had in days. Kagaho’s smile widened. 

“That’s all I want to hear,” he answered, and didn’t resist as Dohko dragged him out of the room.

Honestly, he couldn’t have dreamed up just how good a hot shower would feel. There weren’t exactly any stalls, but Dohko had a key and it was just the two of them. He wanted to feel awkward about stripping in front of him, but there was hot water to shower with, after months of going without and never actually changing out of his clothes, so he found he just couldn’t work up the extra energy to care too much.

The water hit his bare skin almost scalding-hot, and he pulled flame up from his chest to heat it further, taking the worn rag from the shelf beside him and scrubbing away months, if not over a year, of dirt and grime. He’d all but forgotten what his original skin colour was, now a gray, pale colour occasionally dotted with black featherdown. He scrubbed away at his arms, watching the dirt slowly come free of his skin.

“Hey, Kagaho,” Dohko said, a few feet away with his back to him. “I’ll wash your back if you wash mine, I can’t reach it all that well.” He sounded casual, like there was nothing strange about this, and he supposed there really wasn’t. There hadn’t been if it was just him and Sui, but Dohko was his age, and also not related to him as far as he was aware.

“I- Sure,” he answered, slowly, stepping over. Dohko’s back was mostly scales, but he took the rag and what looked to be actual soap, and started scrubbing out the dirt. Dohko evidently had more chances at bathing than he did, but he was still pretty dirty, too. He didn’t touch his tail, unsure of what the social conventions were around that - really, nobody had tails before this! - but managed to get his back to an acceptably clean level.

“There,” he said, softly. Dohko turned around, smiling. 

“Thanks. Your turn.” They swapped spots, and Kagaho leaned forward, resting his forearms on the shelf. Dohko’s monitor was wrapped up tightly in what looked to be a garbage bag, leaving his hand free. It apparently wasn’t all that waterproof. Dohko was gentle with the rag, the scrubbing more of a light scratching against his spine. It felt quite nice, and he let out a birdlike trill, stretching out his tail feathers a little.

“You have coloration!” came Dohko’s delighted-sounding voice. “You’re not just black-feathered, that’s cool!”

“I… Yeah,” he answered, finding his cheeks warm, and not from the water. “Sui and I are phoenixes. Our tails are kind of like peacocks, I guess? But we’re black and red, or at least, we are when we’ve taken a bath more frequently than maybe once a year.”

What he wasn’t expecting was for Dohko to slip his hands around his hips and tug him closer, and down to the tiled floor of the showers. He tensed, following his lead, but turning all the same to face him. Dohko’s face expressed simple contentment, and he held up what looked to be a hairbrush. “Let’s get all the dirt out of your tail, then. Might I have the honour?”

Blood rose to his cheeks and all he could do was nod, allowing Dohko to take his tail and start gently brushing it out. It took everything he had not to twitch away from him, and just to relax and enjoy it. Dohko’s touch was gentle, and it wasn’t very long before he too could see the actual colours of his tail, spanning every colour he’d ever seen in a natural fire, all reds and oranges and golds underneath the coal-black of his cover feathers. He sighed a little, relaxing against his touch, allowing him to continue under the steady stream of the water. After another moment, he leaned over and took the soap, starting to gently work it through Dohko’s hair.

Dohko looked up at him, smiled, and leaned into his hands. He looked away, finding the smile a bit brighter than he’d ever expected, and just kept washing his hair. He was done before his tail had been thoroughly cleaned, but at that point they were about two-thirds down, and so he reached out to Dohko’s hips, gently pulling him closer to the showerhead. Dohko settled his head on Kagaho’s shoulder, pressing a gentle kiss to the muscle inside. Kagaho let out a birdlike caw of surprise.

Dohko grinned with a sharp, bright smile, leaned up a little, and pressed his lips to Kagaho’s. He froze, tensing. Had this stranger really just-?

Dohko shifted away, reaching up to rub at his now-clean back. “You looked like you needed a kiss,” he commented mildly, tone as if he was commenting on Kagaho needing something as simple as a scarf or an extra slice of pizza. “I think you might just need another one, if you keep looking at me like that.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, only held still. He’d never been kissed before, having been too young to have really thought about anything like that before the accident, and now hadn’t seen enough of anyone save his little brother to have thought about it now. He stared at him, Dohko’s hands still working at the bottom of his tail, frozen.

Dohko’s smile faded, a little, and he felt quite distinctly that he didn’t want that smile fading, and so leaned forward, hesitant, stopping an inch from him, not a single shred of courage left for him to continue. His companion completed the motion, moving forward to press their lips together again. His mouth was soft, and wet, and tasted like their dinner. Kagaho closed his eyes, trying to relax, and didn’t panic when Dohko’s hands slipped around his waist and pulled him into his lap.

His arms slipped around Dohko’s neck, finding their way into his hair. He felt his tongue brush up against his lips, and he parted them a little, finding the sensation of another tongue in his mouth actually quite pleasant. One of Dohko’s hands rested on his hip, the other methodically stroking through his tail, the water heavy against his spine. Dohko let him up for air, breaking the kiss with a draconic purr, the water making his skin sparkle against the oil lamp above them.

“I really don’t think we should be doing this in a public bathroom,” he remarked, trying to ignore just how much he suddenly found himself wanting it. He hadn’t seen another person other than his brother since he was thirteen, and none of the people he had seen were closer than maybe ten feet away. He supposed his standards weren’t quite so low, but it was a rather unique situation.

“Then let’s take this somewhere else,” Dohko murmured, slipping his hands to Kagaho’s thighs and standing him, carrying him on his hips. “You are a _very_ pretty bird, Kagaho, and you’re fire-resistant. I’d be honoured to keep this night with you, even if you choose to stay here after tonight.”

He blushed. “I’ll discuss it with Sui in the morning before you head out. You found me civilization, and I want the best route toward survival.”

“That’s a deal, then,” Dohko answered, leaning in and pressing an open-mouthed kiss to Kagaho’s neck. He let out a noise that he wasn’t exactly sure how to describe, reaching over and turning the water off with his free hand. Sui was safe, and getting taken care of, and Dohko was certainly intending on taking care of him, too. He needed the luck, and while it was here, he was going to take it.


End file.
